Tag: appeal

Hall v. McDonough, No. 19-8717 (Decided October 18, 2021); The particular form a claimant submits—correct or otherwise—has no bearing on the Board’s jurisdiction to hear an appeal. Although VA can require a claimant to fill out a particular form and can dismiss nonconforming or untimely filings in appropriate circumstances, none of this affects the Board’s jurisdiction to hear appeals of veterans benefits decisions. Only Congress (or the Constitution) can set the parameters for jurisdiction, so an agency can neither expand nor limit its own jurisdiction through regulation. And because there is no indication that Congress intended to limit the Board’s jurisdiction to cases where veterans fill out the correct form, we reverse the Board’s finding that it lacked jurisdiction and remand for further development.;
Single Judge Application; Davis v. McDonough, 34 Vet.App. 131, 132 (2021) (“Under 38 C.F.R. § 3.156(b), when new and material evidence is submitted within the appeal period following a VA decision on a claim, the evidence must be considered in connection with that claim,” and “if VA fails to undertake that consideration, the claim remains pending until it does. Thus, when this rule is implicated, it can require the assignment of effective dates for benefits ultimately granted that are much earlier than would otherwise obtain.”);
Single Judge Application; Bailey v. Wilkie, 33 Vet.App. 188, 204 (2021) (noting that an RO decision granting benefits could not divest the Board of jurisdiction over the initial appeal and that, on remand, the appellant was entitled to have his appeal processed to completion thus preserving the possibility of an earlier effective date);
Single Judge Application; hearing loss effective date; Swain v. McDonald, 27 Vet.App. 219 (2015); in Swain v. McDonald the Court explained that 38 C.F.R. § 4.85 does not govern the effective date for hearing loss ratings. See 27 Vet.App. at 224-25. The Court held that the effective date for hearing loss may be earlier than the date of an audiometric test that satisfies the criteria under 38 C.F.R. § 4.85, and that, “unless otherwise specifically noted in the statute or regulation, [38 U.S.C. § 5110(b)(3)] and [38 C.F.R.] § 3.400 govern the effective date for disability benefits claims.” Id. at 225. The Board noted some of Mr. Garcia’s statements about his worsening hearing loss before 2019, but the Board denied entitlement to a compensable rating before June 11, 2019, seemingly because the record did not contain any other “audiometric testing results during this portion of the appeal period which comply with 38 C.F.R. § 4.85 for rating purposes.” R. at 11.; » HadIt.com For Veterans Who’ve Had It With The VA
Dolbin v. McDonough, No. 21-2890(DATED: August 26, 2021); Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act of 2017 (VAIMA); Under VAIMA, appeals in RAMP are docketed in the order that they are received on a dedicated docket. Pub. L. No. 115-55, § 4(b)(3)(B)(i)(II), 131 Stat. 1105, 1121; VAIMA makes clear that RAMP operates independently of the existing “legacy” appeals system. Pub. L. No. 115-55, § 4(b)(1), 131 Stat. at 1120 (“The Secretary of Veterans Affairs may, under subsection (a)(1), carry out a program to provide the option of an alternative appeals process”); The Act also clearly sets out a first-come, first-served docketing system for RAMP appeals; Section 4(b)(3)(B) requires the Board to “maintain fully developed appeals on a separate docket than standard appeals” and to “decide fully developed appeals in the order that the fully developed appeals are received on the fully developed appeal docket.” Id. § 4(b)(3)(B)(i)(I)-(II), 131 Stat. at 1121;
Single Judge Application; writ; The Board’s decision to remand this matter, in order to obtain additional, and impliedly negative evidence, is an exercise of “naked and arbitrary power.” See Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 366 (1886) (Matthews, J.); In Wolfe v. Wilkie, 32 Vet.App. 1 (2009), we issued a writ even though the petitioner had the ability to appeal the matter to the Court. The circumstances here are similar in that regard and equally as egregious. This is illustrative of systemic legal errors that can be corrected in the context of a petition. See Mathis v. Shulkin, 137 S. Ct. 1994, 1995 (2017)(Sotomayor, J., concurring) (noting the continuing “dialogue over whether the current system for adjudicating veterans disability claims can be squared with VA’s statutory obligations to assist veterans in the development of their disability claims.”); (Gorsuch, J., dissenting)(“Congress imposed on the VA an affirmative duty to assist—not impair—veterans seeking evidence for their disability claims.”). The conduct of VA here is certainly emblematic of a systemic, bureaucratic disorder, which we are uniquely ordained to deal with;
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